SS Exodus
Exodus 1947 was a packet steamship that was built in the United States in 1928 as President Warfield for the Baltimore Steam Packet Company. From her completion in 1928 until 1942 she carried passengers and freight across Chesapeake Bay between Norfolk, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland.
From 1942 President Warfield served in the Second World War as a barracks and training ship for the British Armed Forces. In 1944 she was commissioned into the United States Navy as USS President Warfield , a station and accommodation ship for the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach.
In 1947, she was renamed Exodus 1947 to take part in Aliyah Bet. She took 4,515 Jewish migrants from France to Mandatory Palestine. Most were Holocaust survivors who had no legal immigration certificates for Palestine. The Royal Navy boarded her in international waters and took her to Haifa, where ships were waiting to return the migrants to refugee camps in Europe.
Building
built President Warfield in Wilmington, Delaware, as hull number 399. She was launched in 1927 and completed in 1928. She was a sister ship of the Baltimore Steam Packet Co's State of Maryland and State of Virginia, which had been completed in 1922 and 1923 respectively.The ship was originally to be called Florida. However, S. Davies Warfield, who was President of the Baltimore Steam Packet Co and its parent company, the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, died while she was being built, so she was named President Warfield in his honor.
Like her sisters, President Warfields registered length was, her beam was and her depth was. As built, her tonnages were and. She had a single propeller, powered by a quadruple expansion steam engine.
Baltimore Steam Packet
The Baltimore Steam Packet Co registered President Warfield in Baltimore. Her US official number was 227753, and until 1933 her code letters were MOVN.Until 1942 President Warfield and her sisters worked a packet route on Chesapeake Bay between Norfolk, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland. She was built as a coal-burner, but in 1933 she was converted to oil fuel. In 1934 her code letters were superseded by the new call sign KGQC.
President Warfield was modernised with the installation of a fire sprinkler system in 1938, and wireless direction finding and ship-to-shore telephone in 1939.
Second World War
On July 12, 1942, the War Shipping Administration acquired President Warfield and several other US East Coast packet ships for the British Ministry of War Transport. Having been built only for service in the relatively sheltered waters of Chesapeake Bay, President Warfield needed to be altered to cross the North Atlantic safely. Her superstructure was cut back, and a "turtle-back" covering was built onto the forward end of her superstructure to withstand heavy seas. She was fitted with cargo ship masts and derricks. She was fitted with one three-inch 12-pounder gun on her stern as main armament, plus four 20mm anti-aircraft guns. She was repainted in plain gray. The alterations increased President Warfields tonnages to and.In September 1942 President Warfield sailed to Britain via Boston, Halifax, Nova Scotia and St John's, Newfoundland. From Boston onward she was escorted in convoys. Coast Lines of Liverpool, England, provided British Merchant Navy crews for President Warfield and the other coastal packet ships to bring them from the US to Britain. A crew commanded by Captain JR Williams took over President Warfield, and on September 21, 1942, she left St John's in Convoy RB 1 to Liverpool.
Convoy RB 1
Convoy RB 1 officially comprised eight merchant ships, escorted by two Royal Navy destroyers: and. On the afternoon of September 25 a U-boat wolf pack attacked the convoy about west of Ireland. fired a spread of four torpedoes, two of which hit RB 1's commodore ship—the packet ship Boston—sinking her with the loss of 17 of her crew. HMS Veteran and the packet ships New Bedford and Northland rescued 49 survivors.The packet ship Southland twice sighted a periscope, but each time drove off the submarine with rapid fire from her 12-pounder gun. A torpedo was fired at President Warfield, but the packet boat quickly turned parallel to it and the torpedo passed by about off her port beam. Two minutes later President Warfield sighted a submarine near her port quarter and opened fire with her 12-pounder. HMS Veteran joined in the action with depth charges.
Just before midnight, fired a spread of two torpedoes, hitting Bostons sister ship, New York, which was the vice-commodore's ship. 38 men were killed, the survivors abandoned ship, and an hour and a half later sank her drifting hulk. HMS Veteran stopped to rescue survivors but torpedoed the destroyer, sinking her with all hands in the early hours of September 26.
The convoy dispersed but the attack continued. Late on the evening of September 26, torpedoed the steamship Yorktown, sinking her with the loss of 18 men. Two days later the destroyer rescued 42 survivors. President Warfield escaped further attack, and reached Belfast, Northern Ireland independently. Other surviving ships from the convoy reached Derry and Greenock.
The convoy lost a total of three packet ships, one destroyer and 131 men, but the other five ships safely reached the British Isles. Posthumous decorations were awarded to some of the officers lost. In May 1943 the master and chief engineer of each of the five surviving ships, including Captain Williams and his Chief Engineer, was made an OBE.
European war service
From Belfast, President Warfield continued to England, where she moored in the River Torridge at Instow on the north coast of Devon. There she served as a Combined Operations training and barracks ship for the Royal Marines and Commandos. She provided accommodation for 105 officers and 500 other ranks.In July 1943, the British Government returned President Warfield to US control. On May 21, 1944, she was commissioned into the US Navy as USS President Warfield, with the pennant number IX-169. In July she served as a station and accommodations ship off Omaha Beach on the coast of Normandy.
After service in England and on the Seine in France, she arrived at Norfolk, Virginia, July 25, 1945. She left active Navy service on September 13, was struck from the US Naval Vessel Register on October 11 and was returned to the War Shipping Administration on November 14. She then spent about a year moored in the James River, where she was one of many ships laid up as surplus after the end of the war.
Jewish refugees
After World War II, about 250,000 European Jews were living in displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria. Zionist organizations began organizing an underground network known as the Brichah, which moved thousands of Jews from the camps to ports on the Mediterranean where ships took them illegally to Palestine. This was part of the Aliyah Bet immigration that began after the war. At first many made their way to Palestine on their own. Later, they received financial and other help from sympathizers around the World. The ships were crewed mostly by volunteers from the United States, Canada and Latin America. Under Aliyah Bet, more than 100,000 people tried to illegally migrate to Palestine.The British government opposed large-scale immigration. Displaced person camps run by American, French and Italian officials often turned a blind eye to the situation, with only British officials restricting movement in and out of their camps. In 1945 the British government reaffirmed its 1939 policy limiting Jewish immigration which it adopted after a quarter of a million European Jews arrived fleeing Nazism, and Palestine's Arab population rebelled. The British government deployed naval and military forces to turn back the refugees. More than half of 142 voyages were stopped by British patrols, and most intercepted migrants were sent to internment camps in Cyprus, the Atlit detention camp in Palestine, or to Mauritius. About 50,000 people ended up in camps, more than 1,600 drowned at sea, and only a few thousand reached Palestine.
Of the 64 vessels that sailed in Aliyah Bet, Exodus 1947 was the largest. She carried 4,515 passengers, the largest-ever number of illegal immigrants to Palestine. The story received much international attention, thanks in large part to dispatches from American journalist Ruth Gruber. The incident took place near the end of Aliyah Bet and toward the end of the British mandate, after which Britain withdrew from Palestine and the state of Israel was founded. Historians say Exodus 1947 helped unify the Jewish community of Palestine and the Holocaust-survivor refugees in Europe as well as significantly deepening international sympathy for the plight of Holocaust survivors and rallying support for the idea of a Jewish state. One called the story of the Exodus 1947 a "spectacular publicity coup for the Zionists."
Voyage preparations
On November 9, 1946, the Potomac Shipwrecking Company of Washington, D.C. bought President Warfield from the WSA for $8,028. The company was acting for the Haganah Jewish paramilitary organization, and two days later sold her for $40,000 to the Weston Trading Company of New York, which was a Haganah front organization. Zionist supporters in Baltimore funded her purchase. Haganah transferred her to Mossad LeAliyah Bet, the branch of Haganah that ran Aliyah Bet.Haganah spent another $125,000 to $130,000 repairing, overhauling and modifying the ship for her voyage to Palestine. Britain had recently announced that it would begin deporting illegal immigrants to Cyprus rather than Atlit. Mossad LeAliyah Bet responded by deciding that migrants should resist capture. President Warfield was deemed well-suited for this because she was relatively fast, sturdy enough to not easily capsize, made of steel which would help her to withstand ramming, and was taller than the Royal Navy destroyers that would be trying to board her.
President Warfield was also chosen because of her derelict condition. It was risky to put passengers on her, and it was felt this would either compel the British authorities to let her pass the blockade because of the danger, or damage Britain's international reputation.
For months, teams of Palestinian Jews and Americans worked on Exodus 1947 in order to make it harder for British forces to her take over. Metal pipes, designed to spray out steam and boiling oil, were installed around the ship's perimeter. Lower decks were covered in nets and barbed wire. Her engine room, boiler room, wheelhouse and radio room were covered in wire and reinforced to prevent entry by British soldiers.
File:President Warfield 1947.png|thumb|President Warfield off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, in February 1947, on her abortive first attempt to reach France
Haganah re-registered President Warfield under the Honduran flag of convenience. On February 25, 1947, she left Baltimore for Marseille, but she ran into bad weather in the Virginia Capes and then a heavy sea about east of Diamond Shoals. Her forward hold began to leak, and she radioed the United States Coast Guard for help. The tanker E. W. Sinclair picked up her distress message, found President Warfield and stood by. The coast guard cutter USCGC arrived to tow her back to safety, but the weather eased and President Warfield was able to reach Norfolk, VA under her own power.
After her damage was surveyed in Norfolk, President Warfield spent a fortnight in Philadelphia being repaired. She then sailed via the Azores to Porto Venere in Italy, where she was refitted and bunkered. In July 1947, she arrived at Sète on the south coast of France.